It's just the pleasure of complaining about nothing.At the moment, from 20 to 18 don't change nothing, 5/6 hits you die.
Early game? After you can have a "steady" supply of food i agree, early is a pain in the ass. The only easy way to me was sleeping after one fight.
My main problem is that is told one time and there is no log, nothing, if you skip that part for any reason, go do anything else (for example explore) and you forget where is, you have no idea that the axe is east and the pickaxe is north, one simple "i should look at the axe at the fire station east" in the notes could help a lot.
The workshop can be upgrade and you have more equipment.
Just pick up the food while dodging the zombies while running. There is too much harvestable food in each region.
It gives you the position of important items, it's better to go somewhere else than to go right away. It's true that the game is based on improving the base, so frankly, what's the point of looking 1rst for the items to collect the resources to do so...